BECAUSE THE PRIVILEGED CLASS WILL NOT STAND FOR LOSING ANY PRIVILEGES: Why the Rage at Trump for Revoking Brennan’s Security Clearance?

THEIR APPRAISAL IS SPOT-ON: ‘Stupid Bullsh*t’: Austin, Texas Residents and Tourists Oppose Renaming City.

DAVID SOLWAY: The Luciferian Left. “Not John Milton’s fallen angel, but a risen devil.”

SAD: Ben Carson’s ‘Fall From Grace’ Amongst Black Americans. “While it’s easy to say this is a reaction to Trump, it’s clear the real issue is his conservative politics.”

TERRY TEACHOUT: About Last Night. “For those of you who’ve been wondering, Mrs. T is in the intensive-care unit of a New Jersey hospital, and I’m at her side.”

Such misadventures, I regret to say, are part of everyday life for those who require organ transplants in a city that has, as the New York Times recently explained in an important and disheartening feature story, “the lowest rate of organ donor registration in the country.” You wait your turn as patiently as you possibly can, and the longer you wait, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. That’s what happened to us.

To be perfectly frank, I nearly lost Mrs. T last week. But she hung on, that being her way, and as of today she appears to be recovering, slowly but surely. I don’t know when she’ll be getting out of the hospital, but once she does, our lives will return to what we’ve learned in the past few years to think of as “normal.” In fact, we’ll be heading back to Cape May as soon as her health permits. That’s what you do when you suffer from a chronic illness. You wait, hope—and live.

Meanwhile, what I said in this space last November is as true now as it was then: “If you haven’t signed up to be an organ donor, please do so now, and encourage your friends to do likewise. The life you save could be that of the woman I love.”

My father died far too young, waiting for an organ transplant that never came. Unless you have a health condition preventing you from donating your organs, please do consider signing up.

EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATICAL: Chef Jamie Oliver accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for his Jamaican ‘Punchy Jerk Rice.’

HEALTH: Want to Live Longer? Don’t Cut Out That Bread and Pasta. “A recent study found that low-carb diets decrease life expectancy.”

I’ve never tried low-carb, keto, or paleo myself, but I’ve seen them work miracles for others.

UH-HUH: Defiant Iran says to unveil new fighter jet, continue missile production.

More: Iran’s ‘100% Indigenously Made’ Fighter Can’t Even Be Shown Taking off.

WARREN HENRY: Democrats Are Fielding Even More Anti-Semitic Candidates For Congress. “Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib is representative of the Democratic Party’s march beyond the embrace of candidates who criticize Israeli policy or its current government to a much uglier place.”

Another odd endorsement story occurred in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District. Democratic nominee Scott Wallace came under criticism after it emerged that his charitable foundation has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups that promote the BDS campaign.

Wallace disclaimed responsibility for the donations and denied supporting BDS. Democratic Jewish Outreach of Pennsylvania initially declined to endorse Wallace, but ultimately reversed its decision under pressure from the Democratic Party in a toss-up contest.

Last week, Democrats nominated Ilhan Omar as their candidate in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District. Omar has claimed that Israel “hypnotized the world” and said she hoped Allah would awaken people to “the evil doings of Israel.” She recently defended those comments by referring to “the apartheid Israeli regime.”

Lastly, there is Leslie Cockburn, the Democratic nominee in Virginia’s 5th Congressional District. The Virginia GOP has accused her of being a “virulent anti-Semite,” based on her-coauthorship of “Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship,” a book that “advocated for the inherently anti-Semitic belief that Israel controls America’s foreign policy.”

The Virginia GOP quoted from The New York Times review of the book: “Its first message is that, win or lose, smart or dumb, right or wrong, suave or boorish, Israelis are a menace. The second is that the Israeli-American connection is somewhere behind just about everything that ails us.”

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Latin American Conservative Blogger: Facebook Suspended and Doxed Me. “I fear for my safety. Facebook is very irresponsible.”

YOU MAY NOT BE INTERESTED IN THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG, BUT THE GLEICHSCHALTUNG IS INTERESTED IN YOU: Wells Fargo Closes Florida Politician’s Account Due To Marijuana Donations.

It’s well known that many banks are reluctant to open accounts for marijuana businesses out of fear of running afoul of the U.S’s government’s continued criminalization of the drug.

But one major institution just took the financial services industry’s cannabis cash paranoia a step further, saying—in what appears to be a first—that it won’t do business with a political candidate because she has received donations from cannabis industry interests.

Wells Fargo, the fourth-largest bank in the U.S., fired Florida agriculture commissioner candidate Nikki Fried as a client this month because her campaign has received donations from “lobbyists from the medical marijuana industry,” according to copies of emails her campaign made public on Monday.

Banks policing who candidates may or may not receive donations from is not a road we want to go down.

STEIN’S LAW, REAL ESTATE EDITION: Luxury Apartment Sales Plummet In New York As Sellers ‘Capitulate.’ “Sales of luxury apartments that cost $5 million or more in New York City have plummeted more than 31% over the first six months of this year, and sellers are trying to make up for the drop in sales by slashing prices to meet buying demand. A market report by Stribling & Associates, a New York-based brokerage, noted the fact that sales in this luxury category have fallen drastically year-over-year. It found that the drop in sales was concentrated in newer condominiums, where supply has been overwhelming, according to a follow up on the report by WSJ.”

BECAUSE TRUMP IS A NAZI OR SOMETHING: Under Trump, ICE Finally Deports Nazi War Criminal Who Was Living on Welfare.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Facebook Cracking Down on Fake News with ‘Life or Death Consequences.’

THIS PROBABLY MAKES US HEARTLESS COLONIALISTS OR SOMETHING: Navy Hospital Ship USNS Comfort Will Deploy to Colombia to Care for Venezuelan Refugees.

Colombian President Ivan Duque offered specific suggestions on what he hoped a Comfort mission would accomplish, Mattis told reporters while returning from Colombia, according to a transcript of the media availability released by the Pentagon. Colombia was the the final stop of Mattis’ week-long, four-country South American tour visiting military and civilian leaders.

“It is an absolutely a humanitarian mission. We’re not sending soldiers; we’re sending doctors. And it’s an effort to deal with the human cost of Maduro, and his increasingly isolated regime,” Mattis said, referring to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, according to the transcript.

Details of a Comfort mission are still being worked out, but one thing Mattis made clear, according to the transcript, is Comfort will not enter Venezuelan waters.

There’s no telling what the desperate Maduro regime might try.

HAVE YOU NO DECENCY? Broward Teachers Union Mocks Young Man Who Lost Sister in Parkland Shooting.

ONE MAN RULE MEANS JUST THAT: China is conducting fewer local policy experiments under Xi Jinping.

The freedom to tinker has never been unlimited, and various autocratic habits have undermined some experiments. One is secrecy. State media are often ordered to keep quiet about pilot projects in case they go wrong. Results can often be published only in classified journals; leakers face years in jail. If China’s experiments with a less draconian family-planning policy had been debated more openly after their launch in the 1980s, more heed might have been paid to their findings: that it was pointless (as well as cruel) to punish parents for having more than one child. Most wanted small families anyway.

Nonetheless, as in any country, let alone one as vast and varied as China, a suck-it-and-see approach yields better results than deciding everything centrally. Alas, under President Xi Jinping, experimentation of any kind has become harder. In 2010—two years before Mr Xi took over—around 500 policy-related pilot projects were being carried out at the provincial level, reckons Sebastian Heilmann of the University of Trier in Germany. By 2016 the number had dropped to about 70.

One reason is fear.

Xi seems almost determined to kill China’s golden goose.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Did Admiral Yamamoto Want to Lose WWII?

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Security Clearances, RUSSIAN Cyberattacks and Much, Much More. “Why is the President watching CNN? No one else does.”

CHANGE? F-35 Engine Production May be Transferred from Turkey to Israel.

THE HUMAN TOUCH: Why Banks Are Giving Tellers Raises, Instead of Firing Them All.

When Goldman Sachs Group Inc. launched its digital consumer bank, it conducted a survey on customer attitudes. It turns out people want to find answers without assistance — until they can’t and immediately want help from a qualified banker. There’s high tolerance for self-service until it fails, and then there’s no tolerance. As banks across the country reassess branches, those findings keep getting validated.

It’s one reason why many bank tellers are getting raises this year. Conventional wisdom is that the job — held by almost a half-million Americans — is entering a sharp decline. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects banks will eliminate more than 40,000 positions in the decade through 2026. That would likely suppress teller wages, which hovered around a median $13.50 an hour last year.

Yet, in interviews and anecdotally, a more nuanced picture emerges. After banks received generous tax cuts in December, several of the nation’s largest — including Wells Fargo & Co., PNC Financial Services Group Inc. and Fifth Third Bancorp — said they’re raising their minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Branches and tellers aren’t going away entirely. Instead, as customers turn to mobile phones for routine financial services, tellers are being upgraded, taught to pitch loans, guide local entrepreneurs and offer technical support. The result is that at many lenders, a job widely seen as endangered by automation is starting to pay more.

No matter how good algorithms become, there may be some things where people still insist on dealing with other people.

IT MIGHT NOT BE LONG NOW BEFORE THEY RULE IT IN: Brazil has not ruled out closing border with Venezuela.

HMM: Some Tesla Suppliers Fret About Getting Paid. “Auto maker’s tumultuous year has concerned some of its suppliers, which are pushed to extend payment terms or asked to give cash back.”

A recent survey sent privately by a well-regarded automotive supplier association to top executives found that 18 of 22 respondents believe that Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies, according to the document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Separately, several suppliers in interviews said Tesla has tried to stretch out payments or asked for significant cash back. And in some cases, public records show, small suppliers over the past several months have claimed they failed to get paid for services supplied to Tesla.

Tesla has improved its on-time payments to production-related suppliers to about 95% from 90% last year, according to people familiar with the matter. For nonproduction suppliers, Tesla is paying on time about 80% of the time, the people said.

“We’re not behind because we can’t pay them,” Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said in an interview Friday. “It is just because we’re arguing whether the parts are right.”

This looks less like a genuine cashflow issue and more like Tesla’s suppliers pushing back on those rebates Tesla reportedly demanded last month, but we’ll see.

PRIVACY: Man sues over Google’s “Location History” fiasco, case could affect millions.

Last Friday, Google quietly edited its description of the practice on its own website—while continuing said practice—to clarify that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps.”

As a result of the previously unknown practice, which was first exposed by the Associated Press last week, Google has now been sued by a man in San Diego. Simultaneously, activists in Washington, DC are urging the Federal Trade Commission to examine whether the company is in breach of its 2011 consent decree with the agency.

In the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court last Friday in San Francisco, attorneys representing a man named Napoleon Patacsil argued that Google is violating the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the state’s constitutional right to privacy.

The lawsuit seeks class-action status, and it would include both an “Android Class” and “iPhone Class” for the potential millions of people in the United States with such phones who turned off their Location History and nonetheless had it recorded by Google. It will likely take months or longer for the judge to determine whether there is a sufficient class.

I hope this goes forward.

ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer Announces Forthcoming Lawsuit Over Patreon Account Removal. “They will soon be hearing from attorneys.”